Hook
by caprelloidea
Summary: His hook is never far. Post 5x11.


Notes: Post 5x11

* * *

His hook is never far.

The paramedics pass it to her father first, the _click_ as it dislodges from the brace echoing harsh against the quiet, somber breeze. Emma's cries had dissolved into a stunned, almost disbelieving, silence. But when she watches David's hand close around the chilled metal – his fingers shaking, the cold sweat on his palm smearing along the base – a fresh well of sobs burst forth. Heavy, wracking, until she can hardly breathe.

She stumbles as Snow leads her back to the loft, and though she longs to be home – _the future's nothing to be afraid of, Swan_ – she lets herself be tucked into bed. Lets her mother tug her shoes gently off her feet as she whispers soothing nonsense into the silence.

Emma shies away, though, when Snow leans forward to kiss her brow. The touch, Emma knows, would be too much. Already there is a rush of blood in her ears, when she can feel Snow's cool breath fanning over her forehead. It's too cold. _Too cold._

His is always warm. He always presses his cheek to her skin. Drags his scruff across her face until his lips press wetly against her brow.

"Was," she whispers.

 _Was_ always warm.

Snow leans back, tears in her eyes. She hovers, unsure, for a minute. Or an hour. Emma can hardly tell. Eventually, though, she can hear Snow's footsteps as she walks away. Can hear the door close behind her as Emma drifts into some hellish place between sleep and awake.

* * *

Emma rouses with light shining in her eyes. The early evening sun streams in the window, the severe angle of the late autumn light catching something on the nightstand. She sits up, only to see that David must have put his hook there when she was sleeping.

She can hardly look at it at first. She clenches her jaw and clutches at her legs, drawing them to her chest. But when the roaring in her ears becomes too loud – when all she can hear is the way his tongue curls around his S's, the way it trips along his T's – she reaches over, and grasps it, tight. She pulls it to her chest, pressing it where her heart pounds, where her chest heaves as her breathing shallows. As her –

" _Bad form, Swan, messing with a man's hook…"_

– mind –

" _I want to know how you got the hook."_

– rages –

" _It…doesn't bother you, then? The hook?"_

– on –

" _I love the hook. No, don't give me that look. I_ love _it. And you."_

– and _on_.

David finds her gasping, curled up on the floor by the bed, some time later, when she's caught in a torrent of disjointed remembrance that she can't escape. Emma's not sure how long it's been. It's dark now, but even the daylight seems clothed in shadow to her now. She's certain the sun will never rise, unsure whether or not she's died alongside him as David carries her back to the bed, his hand in her hair as she drifts back into a jarring unconsciousness.

* * *

A few days pass. The grief does not. It neither ebbs nor flows. It stands still, like the monolith that now bears his name. Though her hands shake and her chest stutters whenever she holds the hook in her hands, she keeps it in her jacket pocket. As she lies on the couch in her living room, she presses at the outline of it.

Still, she can hardly bear to look at it.

But as she gazes at the ceiling, she holds her breath and she pulls the hook out. It slips lightly against the leather, a faint _clink_ as it catches at her zipper. She finds herself wondering what it would have been like. To have come home with him. To feel his chest at her back, warm, vibrating as he whispers nonsense into her. She closes her eyes, and wonders what it would be like if it were _his_ arm at the other end of the hook. If, as the chill seeps in through the fabric of her shirt, he was chasing it away with his hand.

Emma wonders if this is what denial feels like.

She finds she doesn't much care.

* * *

"Honey…"

Snow leans over her on the couch, stroking Emma's hair, pulling the strands away from her forehead and tucking them behind her ear. It's a mother's touch – _he_ had always pulled it forward, a mite of roughness in his touch, grinning at her ear to ear, and she back at him – and it's a welcome contrast against the harsh metal that's been pricking away at the lining of her jacket, poking holes in the soft cotton of her shirts.

"Honey," Snow repeats. "Why don't you come to dinner?"

Emma sighs. Her family has been understanding. More than once has Henry slipped through the front door, and curled up with her on the couch. David has brought her more bear claws than she quite knows what to do with. Regina makes sure the flowers in the vases are replaced long before they wilt. All of it, a wordless source of strength and comfort. And yet…

She's still not ready.

"I'm not ready, Mom." She breathes in, breathes out, finishing on a whisper, nearly lost to the sound of the wind rattling the old windows. "I can still see him. He's _everywhere_."

Emma almost expects Snow to push her, to give her a little nudge in the right direction. She always wishes she would. But instead,

"I know." Snow leans forward to press a kiss to her brow, and this time, Emma lets her. "I _know_. If your father died…"

Emma reaches out, and grasps her mother's hand. "I know."

* * *

It's just as Emma feels like she might be drowning, like it might be too much, too little, too _late_ , that she hears it.

It is an unbearable, atonal chorus of voices. A song of death and despair, of wanting and taking, of never giving back. It calls to her from across the town, carving a furrow into her mind. It draws a jagged, undulating, grossly _familiar_ shape across the inside of her eyelids.

"It's the dagger."

She whispers this to herself as she strokes the curve of his hook with one hand, the other clutching at his ring. And she repeats it to Gold. With each poisonous word that drips out of his mouth, the song grows louder, and the hook heats against her side. As if she's holding it between her hands, as if _he's_ holding it against his side, as he was wont to do.

"Don't test me," she says, and the subtle warmth in her pocket begins to burn.

* * *

In the eerily familiar reaches of the Underworld – where shadows curve along the stone at impossible angles, where light is trapped in the maws of lurking creatures too terrible to imagine – her resolve is tempered. Against the muted haze of death and suffering, she becomes steel. Every flash of memory –

" _No, God,_ Killian. _"_

" _S'okay, love…"_

– is like a whetstone. Grinding against the dull edges of sorrow until her every step is a knife's edge. Her determination, it clashes against the haze, against the uncertainty the follows them about this personal hell. As time begins to unwind, as she and her family are drawn apart by each of their own demons, she can feel her desperation growing. She can feel the distance between them, between her and _him_ –

"Killian," she whispers, fingers to her lips, feeling the shape of his name and she calls it out into the unending darkness.

– stretching onward.

Her hope wavers. Her family wanders. Even the ring around her neck seems lost to her, trapped in a memory. Where his hand was once warm, and his lips were pressing fond promises against the jut of her lips, against the curve of her cheeks.

But his hook. Heavy in her jacket pocket. Warm against her hands. Pulling her to her happy ending.

His hook, at least, is never far.


End file.
